Online launch for Holocaust schools prize

The daughter of Holocaust survivor Dora Love has joined the launch of this year’s Dora Love Prize live from South Africa.

Schools from Essex, Suffolk and Kent have signed up to be part of the flagship educational event which is being offered online for the first time.

Speaking after the launch, Janet Love said: “Dora always tried to engage with the issues that affected other people because she recognised that those forces and attitudes that took away her own youth were still around in other parts of the world – which was why education about the Holocaust was so important to her.

“It is up to all of us to bring hope to others and in so doing bring hope to ourselves. We need to commit ourselves to recognise what this world needs to become and to be aware that we have to be a part of making it become that. That is the legacy that Dora left for us: every little step is important.”

The Dora Love Prize offers children the chance to learn about intolerance, discrimination and outright hatred, the Holocaust and how these issues still impact life in the twenty-first century.

Schools taking part this year can access a range of online workshops and are encouraged to develop a project which expresses issues important to Dora Love: speaking up against hatred wherever it occurs, never forgetting the ultimate consequence of seemingly small acts of discrimination and developing a sense of personal responsibility.

Professor Rainer Schulze, from the Department of History, who founded and coordinates the Prize, said: “Human Rights are not just for a select few, they are not just for us here who live in the western world: the universality of human rights is one of the most basic principles of humanity. We share a common destiny. And we can only master it if we face it together, if we stand together.

“That should be the most important lesson from the Holocaust – and it is equally true in the current Coronavirus pandemic and the rise of nationalist populist movements. That is why the Dora Love Prize is more important than ever: to take an active stand against hatred, discrimination and intolerance. And it is the young generation that need to take an active role: it is their future that is at stake.”

Holocaust survivor Frank Bright, who usually attends the Prize induction day recorded an interview with pupils from Northgate High School in Ipswich.

Any schools wishing to take part in the Prize can still sign up. Email Professor Schulze.